Position management requires agencies to analyze staffing needs, redesign job roles, and structure organizations to align with mission goals. Federal guidelines mandate that managers take responsibility for ensuring their units operate with efficiency, economy, and effectiveness.
Key Insights
- Analyzing staffing scenarios involves evaluating the number of required positions, redesigning roles to align with duties, and selecting an appropriate organizational structure.
- OMB Circulars A-64 and A-123 establish the legal basis for position management, shifting responsibility from HR to organizational managers.
- Managers are accountable for structuring jobs and organizations to maximize efficiency, while HR and advisory staff provide technical and policy support to guide these decisions.
This lesson is a preview from our Federal Position Management Course and Certified Federal HR Business Partner (cFHRBP) Level III Certificate Program. Enroll in a course for detailed lessons, live instructor support, and project-based training.
Now that you've had an opportunity to review those cases, there were three pivotal questions that you should have answered. How many positions are needed to accomplish the mission of the organization? How should the positions be designed? And what type of organizational structure is needed to have a more effective unit? And so, I want you to be able to look at the answer sheet to determine if you match the answers. Let's look at case A. And so, in case A, you should have considered that, currently, the work being done was very expensive.
GS-11 employees are performing clerical work for a significant amount of time. The number of positions, which we call FTEs, full-time equivalent positions, may be adequate, but the positions need to be redesigned. The clerical and technical work needs to be reorganized to allow the GS-11 employees to perform the work they were hired for.
Tom needs to consider establishing a technician-level position, especially one that provides upward mobility. In Case B, efficiency and effectiveness are the primary concerns in this case. It appears that the work is currently being performed as economically as possible.
The design of the positions will be most important. Should duties be assigned along functional or geographical divisions? The design of each position will affect the flow of the work and how the unit is structured. This change will force Sandy to rethink the ways things are currently being done in her organization.
Case C, Richard must look at all three aspects of the position management definition. The changes require his unit to work with the public more. How many positions are needed for this new law? What mix of work should Richard assign to each position? To ensure quality customer service, what structure is best for the unit? This scenario tells us that Richard must hire additional staff.
One critical item inherent to the position design is that Richard must answer is, what are the knowledge and skills necessary to perform the mission of the unit? A determination of the knowledge and skills requirements is a major aspect of designing positions that affects how the duties will be assigned and the occupation and grade level, which is needed to start the recruitment process. And lastly, Case D, like the previous cases, the criteria stated in the definition of the position management must be addressed. How many positions are needed to support the change in the mission? How are these positions to be designed to incorporate the mission's change and to accomplish the current assignments? It's the current structure that you're supervising, the best possible approach to change this mission priority.
Like in Case C, Sam must also decide not only which positions will perform the work of the mission change, but also the new knowledge and skill requirements to do so. Sam needs to make a decision as to what work will not be done or accomplished and discuss this with the commander. Now that you have done this first set of exercises and you have reviewed these cases, I want you to understand that each case brings you closer to being able to think about a systematic manner in which you will be able to determine how many positions are needed, how jobs should be designed, and what type of organizational structure you need for an organization.
And so that is some great information. You have just completed the first activity that will start you on your way to being able to do a full position management review. All right.
Now, if we want to move to the legal basis of position management. And so we know that in the federal government, Congress makes laws and rules and regulations. Congress makes laws, and regulations are afterwards put in place to implement those laws that Congress has put in place.
And so in this instance, for position management, the Office of Management and Budget issued two Office of Management circulars, two OMB circulars. These OMB circulars are OMB Circular A-64, which was issued in 1965. And it required agencies to develop and maintain a position management system.
It didn't give a lot of detail. It didn't go into specifics, but it did put the mandate on agencies to develop and maintain a position management system. And so later in 1995, the Office of Management and Budget issued an additional OMB circular, and that's Circular A-123.
It re-emphasized and specified more that position management is a responsibility of managers. In the older circular, it left the responsibility up to basically the human resources offices, whoever wanted to take on that responsibility, but in the A-123, it was more specific. And so it is now management's responsibility to ensure that they have a solid position management program in place that will ensure that we are constantly looking at economy, efficiency, and effectiveness throughout the organization.
And so we want to make sure that we understand that those are important to ensuring that we use our money wisely. And so now let's look at the roles and authorities of position management. Executives, managers, and supervisors have the responsibility to exercise sound position management judgment, again, in the most effective, efficient, and economical manner possible.
That means the classifying of jobs or designing of jobs, the way they structure their organizations, and the ability to effectively utilize human resources. And so they are required to meet those mandates. And so support staff, the HR office, the finance office, any advisory analysts, they are to provide sound policy and technical guidance and advice to management for them to be able to facilitate the exercise of sound position management.
That is extremely important in our government. And so we are mandated to ensure that managers have the tools, skills, and knowledge necessary to ensure that they have the most efficient, effective, and economical organization possible.
